The invention relates to a smart card holder having a first central part which can be moved by means of a drive, and having a second central part which has drive elements which form a stop for a smart card and by means of which the smart card is driven during an ejection movement, in order to move said card out of the smart card holder, starting from a first operating position in which the smart card is fully held.
An example of a device of this type is a digital tachograph in which smart cards are used to identify the driver and/or to store driver- and vehicle-specific data. These smart cards are inserted into the digital tachograph and locked in the inserted position. The card must not be arbitrarily removed from outside or ejected from the device under any circumstances when it is recording or when the vehicle is in use, but rather only under specific conditions controlled by the device. Since tachographs are generally used for statutory reasons, particularly stringent security requirements are imposed, that is to say the locking has to be absolutely secure against manipulation, in order to ensure the evidentiary value of the recorded data.
When used in vehicles, unfavorable environmental conditions prevail in which locking of the smart card additionally has to be resistant to shocks and vibration.
Smart cards holders are also known, for example, from automated teller machines in which the card is inserted into a slot in the device and then drawn in by the device. The insertion slot is locked by a flap so that the card cannot be removed during the processing operation in which the device is communicating with the chip in the smart card. The disadvantage of this known embodiment of a smart card holder is that it requires a great deal of space. Although this does not present a problem in the case of automated teller machines, since enough space is available here, the devices in other applications have only very little space available for the smart card holder.
A first step towards reducing the space requirement of the smart card holder is designing it to be semiautomatic, that is to say the card is manually inserted and locked, but ejection is started and performed by the device. Since, in the case of a semiautomatic embodiment such as this, a user can still grasp the smart card on account of the compact configuration of the holder, it is necessary to provide locking elements which prevent the smart card from being removed when in the writing and reading position.
German laid-open specification DE 198 09 619 A1 has already disclosed an arrangement for holding a smart card, but this does not offer sufficient security against the smart card being removed during the reading process.